The blood component separation apparatus is adapted to a separate various components from the blood, such as a blood corpuscle component and blood plasma component. The apparatus comprises a separator equipped with a filter for separating a given component from the blood and a blood circuit section which allows the blood to be extracorporeally circulated at a given sequence including the separator and returns it back thereto. The blood circulation circuit is generally composed of:
(1) An inlet-side circuit for supplying the blood which has collected from the donor to the separator;
(2) An outlet-side circuit for returning the blood whose component, such as the blood plasma, has been separated by means of the separator back to the donor; and
(3) A treatment circuit (called as a filtrate circuit for blood plasma separation) for treating a component, such as the blood plasma, which has been separated by means of the separator.
Further, the respective blood circuit includes a pressure monitoring circuit, tubes for a blood pump, a liquid medicine inlet, a bubble trap, and so on, so as to allow the circulation of the blood, the smooth filtration of it by the separator, and so on.
Upon the assembly of a blood component separation apparatus, the aforementioned blood circuits and function section are placed in proper locations and have all to be connected together exactly. The assembling operations are very complex in nature and there is a risk that a connection error will occur oftener.
In order to alleviate cumbersome operations upon assembly and to avoid the aforementioned connection error, a blood plasma separation apparatus has been proposed, for example, in Japanese Patent Disclosure (KOKAI) No. 60-190967, which is composed of a blood circuit and intra-circuit function section alone as has already been set forth above and is connected to a hollow-fiber type blood separation filter. In this apparatus, the blood circuit is composed of two plate-like members stacked with a grooved passage defined by at least one of them to provide a stacked structure.
Japanese Patent Disclosure (KOKAI) No. 60-500159 discloses a blood plasma separation apparatus which incorporates not only a blood circuit and function section as have been set out above, but also a hollow-fiber type blood plasma separation filter, in the same casing to provide a packaged unit and which drives the blood under air pressure control. This apparatus is all of a flat array type including the blood circuit, the blood plasma separation filter and the other function section.
The recent advance of the blood component separation technique in this field permits a high-level separation of the blood plasma by, for example, a double filtration method or a single-needle type recirculation blood plasma collection method. The double filtration method is directed to separating a protein of a large molecular weight from the blood. On the other hand, the single needle type recirculation blood plasma collection method permits the human blood to be collected out of, and returned back to, the donor by the single syringe needle in which case, in order to draw as large an amount of blood plasma as possible from the blood, plasma-separated blood is recirculated to the separation filter through the utilization of a blood storage container, a recirculation circuit and a recirculation pump.
The aforementioned blood component separation apparatus requires a complicated blood circulation circuit and a more cumbersome assembling operation. In the case of such a blood component separation apparatus including the aforementioned blood circuit, the function section and the separator as an integral unit, a current demand cannot be satisfied because these component parts have to be arranged as a flat array unit.